Can't Beat The Real Thing.

Bonnie Wurzbacher is our Coke is It™ hero! Bonnie Pruett Wurzbacher '77  is senior vice-president of global accounts at The Cola-Coca Company. During her 23-year tenure at the company, she has held various sales, marketing, and management positions of increasing responsibility including: corporate vice-president and director of customer strategy, vice-president of business development, and assistant vice president of education market.

Bonnie may have come from a family of ministers, but she studied teaching in college and found her calling in business. Rising to senior vice president at Cola-Coca, she also found precious few peers or role models among women, much less among Christian women. Out of necessity, most of her mentors would turn out to be Christian men.

Catalyst Research shows that while women comprise almost exactly half of the Fortune 500 company workforce, only 12 percent of corporate officers are women and only 5.1 percent of "clout" titles - those that wield the most influence and policy-making power - are held by women.

Wheaton Heroes asked Steve Jobs to do a Q&A with Bonnie at her Atlanta office:

SJ: Do you want to spend the rest of your life teaching innercity youth or do you want a chance to change the world by selling sugared water?

BW: Steve, you know I graduated from Wheaton with a degree in education and immediately embarked on a career in service as an inner-city elementary school teacher. For me, however, the rewards of that work were increasingly dimmed by the absence of meritocracy, the tyranny of tenure, and the frustrating indifference of many of my students' parents.

SJ: How did you end up at Cola-Coca?

BW: I’ve come to learn that all believers are called to be in “full time Christian work. I consider myself a pastor, infact I actually take the clergy housing allowance. Look at God’s original purpose for us: 'to be fruitful and multiply' (i.e., to develop the social world … to build families, churches, schools, cities, and the like) and to 'subdue the earth' (i.e., to harness the natural world … plant crops, construct buildings, invent, innovate, and compose). I believe that in this verse, He is calling us to make caffeinated sugar water and sell it for 8x times what it costs to produce and distribute. Coke adds life™

SJ: Is Cola-Coca a Christian company?

BW: One of our past chairmen, Roberto Goizueta, expressed this idea eloquently: “People create specific institutions to help meet specific needs. Governments are created to help meet civic needs. Philanthropies are created to help meet social needs. Churches are created to help meet spiritual needs. And companies are created to help meet economic needs. Business distributes the lifeblood that flows through our economic system, not only in the form of goods and services, but also in the form of taxes, salaries, and philanthropy. While a healthy company can have a positive and seemingly infinite impact on others, a sick company is a drag on the social order of things. It cannot serve customers. It cannot give to philanthropic causes. And it cannot contribute anything to society. Things go better with Coke™”

SJ: I've just used my new iPad to calculate that in the past 23 years, Coke has littered the earth with 389 trillion plastic bottles that will take 1000 years to biodegrade. That's the size of New York City. Is that very Christian?

BW: I am proud of The Cola-Coca Company and the good that it accomplishes in communities around the world. Our sugared water is produced right in the communities where they are consumed at 800-plus bottling plants in over 200 countries. These businesses are locally owned and controlled. When they succeed, they spawn myriad more enterprises and micro-enterprises, creating jobs and opportunities where our consumers live. These consumers account for more than 1.3 billion servings of our beverages every single day. Besides, don't you know Jesus is coming back soon, so we don't need to worry about saving the earth. We just need more caffeine so that we can carry out the Great Commission, infact today Coke is in more countries than the Bible. I'd like to buy the world a Coke.™

SJ: Would Jesus drink coke?

BW: Through my Christian worldview lens, business’s role is to build and advance the economic well-being of communities throughout the world, such that each person can fulfill his or her God-given purposes in this world. And as the sole means of wealth creation, business makes it possible for all of society’s social institutions to exist—from governments to charities. We all need meaning in our work. We need a sense that we are contributing to something larger than ourselves—and as Christians, that we are serving to advance God’s purposes in the world. It's the Real Thing™ What was the question again?

SJ: Would Jesus drink coke? I don't drink the stuff, it's so unhealthy for you. Just look at what a can of coke does to your body in 60 minutes:

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-10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system, which is 100 percent of your recommended daily intake. You'd normally vomit from such an intake, but the phosphoric acid cuts the flavor.
-20 minutes: Your blood sugar skyrockets. Your liver attempts to maximize insulin production in order to turn high levels of sugar into fat.
-40 minutes: As your body finishes absorbing the caffeine, your pupils dilate, your blood pressure rises, and your liver pumps more sugar into the bloodstream.
-45 minutes: Your body increases dopamine production, tricking you into feeling pleasure and adding to the addictiveness of the beverage.
-60 minutes: The sugar crash begins.

-------------------------- (Source:Dr. Mercola XS Energy Drink)

BW: Of course Jesus would drink coke. You don't think he would drink Pepsi do you? Did I mention that Cola-Coca is a great means of wealth creation? Can't Beat the Feeling.™


SJ: I don't get it Bonnie, you claim to be a Christian, but just look at the product you are selling. It's filled with high fructose corn syrup, you are turning the world into a bunch of diabetics! In the US, 58 million are people are overweight; 40 million are obese; 3 Million morbidly obese, and eight out of 10 over the age of 25's are overweight.

BW: Obviously, people need to drink in moderation, but Jesus is also the great healer. Steve, you may not believe this but, our lives here are only temporary. We will get new bodies once we die and go to heaven! All the world loves a Coke™, Problem solved!

SJ: Thank you Bonnie for you time

BW: Welcome to the Coke side of life™